9 comments

I remember somebody telling me that to connect with children you’ve got to get down to their level. And they didn’t mean physically. At least I don’t think so. Dave, you seem to keep coming back to the same old problem. Could it be that there is just too many academics calling the shots in the Ad game these days? All them brains and not enough street smarts? Perhaps the time is right for another ‘punk’ agency’ again?

Okay, less controversial than you’re expecting perhaps. But my reaction was that, where you began as usual with a distinctive and well-planned allusion, you finished off with blog-bollocks – and you’re better than that.

Your Einstein quote makes no sense. It contradicts your post.

At the start, you kick off with a lengthy pitch about obfuscating the masses, right? Valid pun, by the way. You’re right: at the time, only the learned – most of whom were priests – could understand Jerome’s Vulgate. The Church wanted to maintain their power and ensure a hierarchical omnipotence.

The alternative to the status quo? Salvation through faith rather than works or donations to the Church, which, let’s face it, would have been a bit of a gamechanger at the time. Phase in the new edition, phase out the priests. Oh shit, et cetera.

I’m with you so far. Loving it, in fact – you’re bang on about those bad, bad marketing people. Grrr. They do take to their pulpits in exactly the same way: speaking in tongues, day in, day out. Neurobollocks, most of it.

Complex sermons, hiding vulnerability behind a façade of perceived venerability – precisely so they can elicit a sense of awe (and more dosh in the collection plate) from their congregation. I’m the first (in that vein) to say, “bring it on, Darwin”.

However, where you kicked off by clarifying the clergy’s prediliction for suppressing enlightenment, ‘the priest would tell them all what it meant’, you finished with a quote that infers the priests *couldn’t* explain it and didn’t understand.

You wrote: ‘The truth is what Einstein said: “If you can’t explain it to an eleven year old, you haven’t really understood it yourself”.’ Am I wrong about this? Always possible.

With Albert chiming in at the end, telling us they couldn’t explain the sciptures, it felt as though your allegory got muddled – that was all.

If you’d quoted Nietzche instead, and said “remember, ‘faith means not wanting to know what is true’” — I’d have said bravo. Thought-provoking point. Or if you’d reminded us, as Hemingway did, that bad marketing people have to deal with intelligent clients sometimes – all thinking men are atheists — I’d have wandered off into my own bit of happy oblivion.

You can ignore me now.

I’m done.

(Incidentally, it’s worth pointing out that Jerome translated the Old Testament from Hebrew and the New Testament from Greek for his final standard Latin text: before we had bad marketeers, there were also some REALLY bad ad men.)

I don’t disagree with any of that Rentaquil, except for the word bollocks.
The dictionary says bollocks is old-English for nonsense, poor quality, or useless.
I think that’s emotional language, and a subjective value judgement.
I think more accurate would have been ‘non sequitur’ which the dictonary says is Latin for ‘it does not follow’.
Other than that, fair enough.